Antique Prints

What is an Antique Print?

An antique print is one that was made more than one hundred years ago.

At top antique fairs we have attended, such as the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair in London, items must usually be at least 100 years old to be classed as antique. However, original prints made before about 1940 may be considered to be antique if they were not mass produced. In contrast, vintage prints are usually considered to be those made between 1940 to 1980.

Have you wondered when an antique print you've seen was made? Here are our tips for dating antique prints. We would need to write a book to cover all the nuances, but these tips are a good starting point.

Tips for dating antique prints

Years 1460 - 1700

Prints mostly had thick ink lines as most were made with woodcuts

This was the Renaissance era so prints were often about religion or classical subjects such as ancient Rome

Not many
prints from this era were colored

The
paper was usually very thick and uneven as it was hand made in small quantities

Here's an example showing the imperial baths in Rome. Click the picture to see more:

Years 1650 - early 1800s

This
was an era of exploration so prints of foreign animals
and plants were popular. Many were amusingly unrealistic, as the
artists had rarely seen real specimens

Prints
were mostly made from engraved copper plates. Prints
had stronger plate marks as higher pressure was needed to print,
and more detail as finer engraving lines were possible

The
paper was usually thick and uneven as it was hand made

Here's an example. Click the picture to see more:

Years 1800 - 1850

Prints
of animals, plants and travels were popular and more realistic

The paper
tended to be thinner as it started to be machine-made

Copper
plate engravings were still common, but more expensive prints were
produced by lithography, aquatint or stipple engraving

Coloring was still mostly done by
hand

Here's an example. Click the picture to see more:

Years Mid 1850 - 1900

The most common print methods were lithography (speckled appearance) or steel plate engravings (much finer lines than copper)

Plate marks were less common as lower printing pressure was needed

Printed color became much more common from about 1860 onwards

The paper tends to be smoother. One reason is that color lithography printing had been mastered and required smooth paper.